"Of course," said Caruth, after scrumming practice one night, "it's awfully good for us. Bally influence and all that. You know what the crushers say." "And they ought to know," added Martin, "as they never play, at least not compulsorily." "Anyhow," said Caruth, "there is one comfort." "What is that?" "We don't have to sweat it out like Randall's. Their pre's make them groise at it all day and all night." "Good job. The stinkers." Martin's sympathy with the oppressed was not yet as strong as his hatred of Randall's, the pot hunters, the unspeakable. Work with the Terror was not always terrible: for Martin it even had its moments. He enjoyed turning out a good verse or a good translation, and he enjoyed also the commendation that it won. The Terror, whose real name was Vickers, was a young man soured by misfortune. He had meant to go triumphantly to the Bar: he had connections, he had brains, he would rise. But a financial crisis in the family had left him in despair, too old to enter for the Civil Service, too poor to attempt the Bar in spite of his connections. He had drifted, of necessity, to the arduous, responsible, and despised task of moulding the future generation. The future generation, as represented by the Lower Fifth, Classical, of Elfrey, seemed to Vickers a loathsome crew, fit only to be the victim of the sarcastic tongue on which he prided himself. He hated the elderly bloods who remained calmly and irremovably at the bottom of the form: he hated the ink-stained urchins with brains who passed through his hands on their way to higher things. The Lower Fifth he held to be an abominable form because it was neither one thing nor the other. The teaching was not mere routine, the soulless cramming of impenetrable skulls: on the other hand, it wasn't like taking a Sixth. There were times, especially in the afternoons, when the frowst of the water-warmed room, the dingy walls and desks, the ponderous horror of mistranslated AEschylus, and the unmannered lumpishness of the human boy (average age sixteen) would all combine to play upon his nerves and to rend the amorphous thing which once had been an active, ambitious soul. Wearily he vented his wrath upon the form. His method was, as a rule, the sarcasm courteous. He lounged magnificently while he played with his victim. "Simpson!" This to a clever but idle youth remarkable for his large, inky hands and persistent untidiness of apparel. There was something in Simpson's grimy collars and straggling bootlaces that infuriated Vickers. "Simpson!" "Yes, sir?" "You owe me, I think, a rendering of Virgil." "Please, sir, I haven't quite finished it yet, sir." "And how much, may I ask, have you finished?" "Well, sir, last night I had the Agamemnon chorus." "I see, Simpson. I see." "Please, sir, I was very busy." "Our Simpson was busy early this morning also, I suppose." "Yes, sir." "At your ablutions, I presume."